


The Glow of a Star That I Know

by sevensyllables



Series: It Wouldn't Be Make Believe If You Believed In Me [4]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Arguing, Bathing/Washing, Established Relationship, Fallout Kink Meme, Frottage, M/M, Outdoor Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-03 21:50:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5308103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevensyllables/pseuds/sevensyllables
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sent by the Boomers to resurrect the B-29 bomber, Arcade and the Courier argue about whether or not it’s a good idea to trust them—and more largely, the NCR.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Glow of a Star That I Know

**Author's Note:**

> I still don't have Fallout 4.
> 
> Title from Dean Martin’s cover of “Volare,” which is where the quest name came from.

Of course it would be a beautiful day, perfect blue sky reflected like glass on the perfect blue water. Arcade stood stock still on the slipway, one elbow propped on a rusted towing winch that likely hadn’t helped guide a boat onto shore in over a century, thinking. Lake Mead sat placidly beneath the mid-morning Mojave sun, both Hoover Dam and Caesar’s own Fort keeping separate watches in the distance. There was a plane out there beneath the surface, the Boomers believed, and Arcade frowned.

ED-E tutted at him from a few feet away, the beeps somehow interrogative. Arcade did his best to ignore the eyebot—hardly a new occurrence—and ED-E dipped slightly in the air, antennae lowered as if dejected.

After a few moments of abject staring, the Courier came up beside Arcade and knocked their shoulders together affectionately, seemingly immune to his mood.

“That was fun,” he said, jerking a thumb in the direction of the derelict Callville Bay boat house. They had just finished fending off a swarm of cazadores that had taken to nesting in and among the old rotted boats—luckily with no one injured or poisoned this time.

Before that they had fought through half a dozen deathclaws at the Gypsum Train Yard, only after they had cleared the way south through a poorly lit, feral ghoul-infested train tunnel. The previous night had featured too little sleep and too many potentially exploding ants that needed removing from the Nellis generator building, while the previous morning had consisted of the four of them—the Courier, Arcade, Raul, and ED-E—nearly being shelled off of the face of the Wasteland just trying to meet with the Boomers in the first place.

“Hmm,” was Arcade’s only response. This was the first immobile, unhurried moment they’d had since they’d left the Lucky 38 for Nellis just the other morning, but now that he had the spare chance to voice them, all of the protests and articulate arguments he’d formed and repeated in his head seemed to want to stay there.

“What’s wrong, Doc?” the Courier asked, his grin undimmed in the gathering heat. He dropped his messenger bag and his battered cowboy hat to the concrete beneath their feet and nudged Arcade’s arm again. “Can’t swim?”

The look Arcade shot him was unamused, but the Courier remained unconcerned. Better to get right to it, then, he supposed. “Are you sure we should be doing this?” he gestured toward the lake and the Pre-War bomber it allegedly hid.

“Well,” the Courier said, still smiling, although it seemed a touch less casual now, “we kinda have to, if we want the Boomers on our side.”

“That’s what I mean. Thirty-six hours ago they were doing their level best to scatter us in tiny pieces across the Wasteland. Do we even want them on ‘our side’?” Arcade crossed his arms. “Remind me, which side is that exactly?”

The Courier sighed and rubbed at the back of his neck, dark eyes scanning the water, but if he was surprised at the turn this morning had taken, he didn’t show it. It wasn’t as if he couldn’t have known this conversation was coming; Arcade had hardly said more than five dozen words since they’d listened to Pete’s history lesson in the Boomers’ museum yesterday afternoon. He hadn’t turned the Courier away when he’d tucked in behind him last night, pressed together on an empty mattress in a tent by the runway when they finally were able to sleep, but he hadn’t curled into him either. Recovering and rebuilding the B-29 would be a huge boon to the gathering war efforts at the Dam, that he would not dispute, but it wasn’t as if the plane would simply be returned to the depths afterward. And as the Boomers didn’t seem much for external oversight, there laid the concern for Arcade.

The Courier turned back to him. “What do you want us to do, Doc? You heard Pearl; the Boomers have been waitin’ for someone to get through to Nellis, and personally I’d rather it were us.” He jerked his head toward the alternative: the corrugated metal fences on the hill across the lake that marked Caesar’s encampment.

Arcade’s jaw tightened reflexively as he recalled their one short stint on the other side of those walls; everything had stunk of dog and blood. If the Legion were willing to utilize technology more advanced than a pair of binoculars, perhaps he and the Courier would have to worry about being observed by calculating eyes from the cliffs above in this very moment, planning to retrieve a bit of history so that they might be able to better dictate the future.

He didn’t turn back to the Courier; he didn’t turn from the lake. His eyes flicked from the still waters to the Fort above and he asked absently, “How long do you think it’s going to take that madman to realize you’re not coming back?”

“Who knows,” the Courier shrugged, crossing his arms. “Hardly matters either way. Caesar thought I did what he wanted when we went down into House’s bunker, and even if he knew they were down there, he couldn’t do anything about the Securitrons without the Chip.” He took a half step forward, deliberately placing himself in Arcade’s line of sight. “ _Talk_ to me, Arcade,” he said. “What don’t you like about the Boomers?”

“What _do_ you like about the Boomers?” Arcade countered, finally looking the Courier full in the face. “The fact that they’re all just as obsessed with firearms as you are notwithstanding.”

“Oh, well that must be it, then,” the Courier said with a frustrated huff of breath. “Honestly, Doc, how can you not look at them and see what the rest of New Vegas could be? They’re self-sufficient even though not a one of them has left the base in decades; I don’t think Freeside could survive on its own for _days_. And if somewhere like Primm or Novac had their irrigation systems ‘n solar energy? We’d be looking at a whole different Wasteland.”

“Sure,” Arcade allowed, waving one hand vaguely west toward ‘civilization’, Camp Golf in the distance. “But we’re not. And in the Wasteland where the Boomers _actually_ live, their ‘Keeper of the Story’ admitted that their collective dream is to be able to safely bomb ‘savages’ from the sky. That’s not exactly what I would call a heartwarming cultural exchange.”

“Yeah,” the Courier said, squaring up. “But Pete’s a _kid_. Kids like it when things blow up.”

“He’s a kid who’s been taught to repeat the traditions of his people,” Arcade argued. “They _all_ like it when things blow up, or maybe you didn’t notice.”

ED-E beeped unhappily from somewhere behind them and the Courier took a deep breath, turning away from Arcade to run one hand through his hair.

Arcade kicked a crumbled bit of concrete into the lake with a plop. This—whatever this jumbled disagreement was—was not what he had intended when he told the Courier he’d accompany him to the lake, not what he had intended when they’d left Ambassador Crocker’s office on the Strip a few days ago with intel on the Boomers. Arcade took a measured breath, let it go, and said, “I’m just not sure I see the wisdom in so easily trusting a group of people whose preferred form of communication is artillery shells.”

The Courier sighed, tried again. “Yeah, and I get that. You’re not wrong to be suspicious. But we’re here to make allies, and I’d say we’ve cultivated a hell of a lot of goodwill in the past two days. Between your medical treatment and me ‘n Raul fixing their arrays and the grid, we’ve convinced at least Pearl that outsiders are worth something. They’re trying to meet us in the middle; why can’t we?”

“I think we’ve more than met them in the middle,” Arcade said. “In fact, I think we’ve covered the whole distance twice over by now, while they’ve just had to stand back and watch us run. I tended their wounded—and gave Argyll a free medical lesson while we were at it, might I add, because that’s what the Followers _do_. We exterminated those ants, resolved their energy problems. You even upgraded the output of their solar grid, so now they can sit back behind their fences with their howitzers and play at isolationism even more efficiently. Loyal and Jack might have Raul helping them overhaul their defenses right now, for all we know.”

The Courier frowned, but said nothing, listening.

Arcade took a step forward, face a half-foot from the Courier’s now. “And while Pearl has certainly played the part of the benevolent and grateful chieftain, she hasn’t said word one about what the Boomers are going to do for anyone else. How generous do you think they’re going to feel when you’re not standing directly in front of them, ready to do anything they ask, and you’ve already given them the very thing that they’ve always wanted?” He hooked a thumb toward the water where Loyal had claimed the plane rested; ‘the dream of their people’ they had called it. “I think you’ve let your enthusiasm for flight sims and the thought of restoring ancient warplanes keep you from viewing the situation objectively.”

“Yeah?” the Courier said mildly, arms crossed. “Is that all you think?”

“No, actually,” Arcade said. “Would you like to hear the rest?”

“Yeah, Doc,” the Courier said simply. “I _would_.” He reached a tentative hand out, brushing his knuckles over the shoulder of Arcade’s lab coat. “When have I ever made you think otherwise?”

Arcade deflated slightly, but refused to feel guilty. From the second they’d set foot on the grounds of the Air Force Base, the Courier hadn’t taken one look back, hadn’t seemed to consider the weight of his decisions to refit and rearm the Boomers. Arcade’s not sure if he could have given the man pause if he’d tried.

Although, he _hadn’t_ tried.

Arcade hesitated, all of his bluster leaving him, now nothing more than a frustrated echo across the lake. He sighed, trying for a levity he couldn’t commit to, a meeting in the middle, and bumped a hand of his own against the Courier’s, “Would you prefer I started alphabetically or chronologically?”

The Courier sighed, snagged Arcade’s hand as if he were worried it would be withdrawn if he hesitated even a moment. “I just…” he laughed, joyless. “I trust ‘em, Doc.”

“Right,” Arcade winced. “And while I’m sure you have your reasons, I don’t see them.”

It was silent for a moment, the lapping of the lake water against the boat launch insistent rather than soothing, a reminder of what they were here to do. ED-E chose that moment to float forward and bumped against the Courier’s shoulder in some misguided, miswired robotic sense of reassurance. He patted at the eyebot absently, like he would Rex, and Arcade had to hold himself back from either being charmed or rolling his eyes.

“It’s kinda nice to have a day out by the water at least, right?” the Courier said with a weak grin, trying for lighthearted and mostly failing.

“I’ve never been a strong swimmer.”

“Neither is Raul. You coulda stayed back at Nellis with him,” the Courier said, easing his way into Arcade’s space. He let him, nudged the scuffed toe of his shoe against the Courier’s battered boot. “Watched him tinker around the hangar with Loyal or kept an eye on Argyll’s patients. Hell, you could have spied on them if it woulda made you feel better.”

“And leave you on your own?” Arcade asked.

The Courier shrugged. “I’ve got ED-E.” The robot beeped from over his shoulder. “Really all I’m asking you to do is fish me out in case something goes wrong.”

“You’re swimming to the bottom of lakelurk-infested waters to raise a Pre-War bomber to the surface in the hope that it can be turned over to a tribe of trigger-happy isolationists and returned to operable condition. What could possibly go wrong?”

“That’s the spirit, Doc,” the Courier said, head bent in toward Arcade’s. This was where in nearly any other conversation he’d duck in for a kiss, but that didn’t come.

Arcade looked him in the eye; he was all patience and calm.

“I just—” Arcade said. “How can you know that we’re going about this the right way? Do you really trust the NCR with the Mojave?”

“Is that what this is about?” the Courier asked, resting his hands on Arcade’s sides.

“Isn’t that what everything’s about?” Arcade countered unhelpfully.

The Courier frowned, glanced over his shoulder toward Hoover Dam. “Who would you prefer we support? Mr. House?”

“Obviously not,” Arcade said. “But you’ll forgive me if it seems like your decision to seek out the Boomers on the NCR’s behalf reads as a little cavalier.”

The Courier sighed and stepped back from Arcade, turning to lean heavily against the rusted harpoon winch. “Have you ever noticed that you get a lot wordier when you’re tryin’ to pretend like you’re not pissed off?”

Arcade said nothing, kicked at a nearby shipping crate. It seemed sturdy enough, so he dragged it over and sat down heavily, elbows perched on his knees. The Courier took that as his cue to sit as well, sliding down against the base of the winch. He fished his battered canteen out of the bag at his feet, took a pull of water and offered it to Arcade. When Arcade shook his head, a silent ‘no, thank you,’ the Courier looked at him expectantly, letting the canteen fall to his lap and raising his hands as if to say ‘after you.’ Sunlight glinted off of ED-E’s chassis and in a long line across the lake; it would be sweltering soon.

Arcade pinched the bridge of his nose beneath his glasses and blew out a long breath. “Okay, right. I guess I’m just not sure exactly what it is we’re trying to accomplish, and for whom.” He gestured up at the Fort on the cliffs above. “At first it seemed like you were willing to entertain House’s plans, what with the trip to the top-secret Securitron bunker in the middle of Caesar’s lair. But I’ve heard you talk to the King about Freeside’s place in an independent Vegas, and now we’re courting the favor of the Boomers because Ambassador Crocker asked us to. Which is it?”

The Courier let his head clunk back against the winch, dark eyes turned to the cloudless sky. “Honestly, Doc?” he locked eyes with Arcade. “That’s a good question.”

“Well, I’m glad that’s resolved,” Arcade said blithely. “Good talk.”

The Courier stretched out a leg and knocked a foot against Arcade’s calf, chiding. He let his eyes wander across the surface of the lake and released a slow breath. Arcade looked too; there was vague movement on the far shore, the kind of bumbling steps that lakelurks took when found out of water. They didn’t seem concerned with the political discourse being exchanged on the boat ramp, both physically and intellectually out of their range.

“This place needs _help_ , Doc,” the Courier finally said, voice rough as though he hadn’t just taken a drink. “You know that or else you wouldn’t be here.”

Arcade nodded, shoulders sagging, mind swimming with the worn but undeterred faces of the Freeside locals—Jacob Hoff, Grecks, a dozen others whom Arcade has spoken with intermittently—who frequented the Mormon Fort. The Followers did what they could for them, and so did the Kings and Julie’s Major Kieran, but in the face of the neglect of New Vegas’ ruling powers, their combined efforts amounted to little more than bandages on an injury that required surgery. And that was just Freeside. The outlying settlements—Novac, Primm, the smoldering ruin that was Nipton—might be even worse, if human suffering were a thing to be quantified. More to Arcade’s point, the settlements that had already been under NCR control—Nelson, Searchlight, Boulder City—had fared terribly.

“What the NCR intends to do is annex the region, not come to its rescue,” Arcade said. “They’re here for energy, resources. They’re not interested in doing anything for anyone who isn’t explicitly an NCR citizen. Hell, they barely care about their own sharecroppers. New Vegas isn’t exactly near or dear to the heart of the republic. How concerned do you think the senate will be with the Mojave when the Dam is theirs to dispense with as they please?”

The Courier glanced over in the direction of the Dam. It was deceptively modest at this distance, smooth concrete walls lightly sloping in the morning sun, as if it were like any other intact Pre-War structure. “I doubt Caesar’ll be the only one who ever comes knockin’ to try and claim it. The NCR will have to care about _that_ at least. Station permanent troops here, expand the embassy on the Strip, reestablish caravan supply lines. That’ll have to help.”

Arcade paused, then went for the most glaringly obvious point first, “You say that as if deploying a higher volume of well-equipped, bored soldiers far from anyone and anything they actually care about is a good thing.”

“My point’s just that the NCR won’t completely drop everything but the Dam if they take over.”

“I understand your point,” Arcade said. “But, again, I dispute your definition of ‘help.’”

“I trust the NCR’s intentions more than House’s,” the Courier said pointedly. “There’s gotta be a difference between inefficiency and indifference, right?”

Arcade snorted, “Wow, slow down. Don’t oversell them.”

The Courier rubbed at his face, one rough hand digging into the scar at his temple.

“I just think that there has to be another way,” Arcade said, leaning forward on his elbows. “One where New Vegas can exist independently of them all.”

“So let’s say the NCR aren’t the way to go,” the Courier allowed. “We manage to drive them and the Legion out of the Mojave altogether. We pull the plug on House. Then what?”

Arcade’s mind drifted to the fields the NCR had established just outside of New Vegas, watched over by the walls of McCarran and a few dozen scared, bored, young NCR soldiers. He tried to picture Freeside or Westside locals spending fourteen-hour days tending the maize or managing the greenhouses and couldn’t quite imagine it. He thought of Fiends picking through rubble out by Westside, sniffing for weaknesses and an easy kill near the Thorn, unhampered and tireless without NCR patrols to dissuade them. Water rationing, the acquisition of medical supplies, outfitting some sort of law enforcement, developing a law at all to enforce—who would develop any of it and how it would be managed—an endless swirl of considerations crossed his mind.

But the biggest question mark on the subject of an independent Vegas had always been chain of command: finding someone to lead a region with so many disparate identities, tribes, and keeping the relative peace once they got there. House managed it now only by technology and force; even then he only concerned himself with the Strip itself—his legacy and the glory of the Old World gone by—not the people who lived there. The NCR would do so by appointment, selecting tame political figures to fit the role as a placeholder position for something bigger and better back home, laying down rules and regulations blankly, without real consideration for the needs of the region itself.

Arcade’s mouth twisted into a frown. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “Then we try.”

The Courier ran his thumb over his stubbled chin. “Doc, if you can really picture Vegas being able to run itself without falling apart in the first two years, then I say let’s do it. Let’s bring the whole thing down. Fuck the Legion, fuck the NCR, and fuck House.” The canteen fell from his lap to the boat ramp with a clank of aluminum.

“But, I look around at everything that’s already in place and I can’t see it.” His eyes were unfocused, not seeing the lake before him. “A territory needs infrastructure,” he continued with a wave of his hand. “A way to protect itself. And like it or not, those’re things the NCR _can_ provide, and can easily take away if we make an enemy of ‘em. They might be a bureaucratic clusterfuck of a hand of cards, but to me, the rest of the deck looks even worse, and...” He trailed off, with a sheepish grin, as if he suddenly remembered his audience, leaving the requisite platitude unsaid.

Arcade has told the Courier before he hates that phrase—‘you have to play the hand you’re dealt’—and not merely because every wise guy who’s said it has grinned as if they were the first to consider using gambling-based witticism in New Vegas. It’s a false dichotomy, suggesting there was only ‘win’ or ‘lose.’ In Arcade’s experience, conflicts were rarely that neat, a pair of choices to decide between. There was always another option—he had to believe that—it just hinged on opportunity and effort, how far a person or an organization was able and willing to go.

And Arcade did have several dozen arguments on the plausibility of an unshackled New Vegas in reserve; thoughts on food production, energy efficiency, architecture, and military protections that he’d mused on for years, idle nighttime musings for a purpose that was anything but—Followers ideas that all needed capitol, matériel, manpower to be put in place. But it wasn’t as if the Courier, Arcade, and ED-E were going to be able to debate and decide the fate of the Mojave while sitting here, frying in the sunlight beside Lake Mead.

“I don’t think we’re going to resolve this now,” he said, rubbing at his eyes beneath his glasses.

“I don’t know if we’re going to resolve this at all,” the Courier replied, picking at the loose sole of his boot.

Arcade shook his head. That the Courier still thought like this was as incredible as it was absurd. It was as if he were the last person in the Mojave to realize that he’d placed himself squarely in the decision-making epicenter of the chaos the day he resolved to hunt down Benny and the Platinum Chip. Arcade may not agree with his every decision—and demonstrably disagreed with more than a few of his most recent—but he couldn’t deny that the Courier held influence everywhere he went, alternately ingratiating himself with and alienating himself from groups across the Mojave. Arcade tapped the toe of his shoe against the Courier’s calf, his voice full of not-quite-grudging reassurance, “Somehow I think you’ll find a way. Or more likely it will find you.”

The Courier frowned and shrugged, crossing his arms, just as uncomfortable with the assertion of his relative political importance as ever. Arcade let his eyes settle back on the lake before them.

“Speaking of finding things,” he said, and the Courier turned to Lake Mead as well. They held that position for several beats, the late morning sunlight sparkling on the still surface, their objective supposedly waiting for them somewhere below.

“Honestly, Doc,” the Courier said, propping one elbow on his knee. “After having met the Boomers and seeing what Nellis is like: do you really think the best bet is to leave them be?”

Arcade considered their howitzers, their irrigation systems, their bio-diesel refinery, and the gaggle of spirited Boomer children who played tag by pretending to blow each other out of the sky. They had taken every bit of assistance the Courier had offered, yes, but they had chosen to let them in, too—the flight simulators the only thing they had deliberately held back. When he tried to picture what would happen if they hadn’t trusted the Courier as an ambassador—had allowed entrance to the Legion or raiders or someone else instead—he saw only detonation clouds. “No,” Arcade said finally. “I don’t think it is.”

The Courier didn’t quite smile as he rose to a crouch, and visibly hesitated before dropping a hand on Arcade’s knee. “A battle is gonna happen whether we’re ready or not,” he said softly. “But we know that the Legion _will_ be. And I’d rather have the Boomers and all their artillery fighting against those fuckers, whoever that ends up being for.”

“I understand it; I don’t have to like it.” Arcade brushed his thumb over the Courier’s knuckles. “You still have the ballast?”

The Courier shifted and rummaged around in his bag, pulling out the packages Loyal had given him, and the detonator. “Yup,” he said with a tense grin. “Gang’s all here.”

“Great,” Arcade said, not an ounce of enthusiasm behind the word.

The Courier bit at the inside of his cheek before huffing out a breath and placing the detonator in Arcade’s hands deliberately, curling them around the grip. “Would you trigger this thing once I’ve got the ballast in place and I give you the head’s up?” he asked quietly. “I wanna be able to take a look at her before we have to turn her over.”

Arcade clicked his tongue, but held onto the detonator. “I should have realized I didn’t have to worry about the Boomers using the B-29 at all. You’re never going to give it up, are you?”

The Courier stood with a small smile, a pale imitation of his typical teasing grin. “I promised,” he said simply, digging through the bag again. “Besides, I don’t think we have anywhere we could keep a plane in the Lucky 38.”

“Not unless House has a secret hangar he never mentioned,” Arcade agreed with a tight smile of his own. The set of the Courier’s shoulders was still taut.

The Courier pulled out the rebreather he and Jack had built and a junked Vault 34 suit he had wheedled off of him to wear on the swim down. Arcade thought absently that if their disagreement had gone another way, if they hadn’t had it at all, the Courier wouldn’t have bothered to turn his back as he shucked his boots, shirt, and jeans. He’d be grinning at Arcade as he shrugged on the vault suit and asking him how he looked in the rebreather, a wink thrown over his shoulder. As it was, he undressed and redressed silently, facing the lake.

The Courier stood, ballast slung over each shoulder, checking that the rebreather was snug against his face.

“Be careful,” Arcade said, not rising from his seat on the crate.

The Courier paused, considering for a second before he stepped back toward him and bent over, quickly bumping the rebreather against his cheek as if in a kiss. Arcade couldn’t help but smile; the sinking feeling in his stomach relenting only slightly.

Arcade paced down the boating ramp, water just lapping at the toes of his shoes, watching as the Courier swam out and disappeared below the surface. ED-E hovered near Arcade. It seemed like the eyebot might be considering bumping him reassuringly as it had done with the Courier.

“Don’t think I won’t dump you in the lake,” he warned, feeling only slightly foolish threatening a robot. He gestured at the Courier’s bag by the winch and said, “I’m pretty sure I saw a couple of EMP grenades in there.”

ED-E blatted unhappily but floated a more comfortable distance away nonetheless.

Arcade bounced on the balls of his feet and crossed his arms as he waited, detonator in hand. There weren’t any clouds to mark the passage of time, just the steady beating down of the Mojave sun on his back. As the surface of the lake remained still, unbroken, he began to wonder how long it should take, how far down and away the plane was meant to be. He could always check the marker Loyal had placed in the Courier’s Pip-Boy, try to estimate time and distance, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn from the lake. Perhaps the plane wasn’t actually down there, or the press of water and time had rendered it worthless. ED-E beeped quietly as Arcade ran a hand through his hair, damp with sweat and grimy from their fights with the deathclaws and ghouls and god knows what else.

When the Courier finally surfaced, ED-E blared his victory music. For once Arcade had to agree with the eyebot, letting go of a breath he wouldn’t admit to holding.

The Courier swam easy strokes back toward the shore, giving himself a couple dozen yards of empty water from where he’d surfaced. He waved at the shore and Arcade nodded back—not that the Courier could really see that at this distance—and pulled the trigger on the detonator. For a moment nothing happened, the lake just as still as ever, and Arcade wondered if perhaps their argument had been for nothing and the B-29 wouldn’t rise anyway, the ballasts the one thing the Boomers had failed to properly engineer. ED-E beeped hesitantly, and Arcade was just about to tell the eyebot off again, when, with a low rumble and a splash, there was the _plane_. The Courier was rocked back slightly by the displacement of water, but pumped his fist in the air in triumph. Even with his misgivings, Arcade had to admit the sight was impressive.

He watched with a begrudging smile as the Courier made several laps of the bomber, touching it here and there, testing the strength of one of the wings before hauling himself atop the plane to better investigate. Arcade shook his head, dropping the detonator onto the Courier’s bag, its purpose realized, and tugged at his collar. His shirt clung uncomfortably to his back, soaked through with sweat. But he’d sooner find a forest sprouting in the middle of the Mojave than a mechanical or electronic device that the Courier didn’t want to immediately dissect and reassemble, so he didn’t expect they’d be able to find any shade anytime soon, unless he wished to cool off in the boat house with the cazador carcasses from earlier. ED-E moved a bit closer to the water, beeping, and Arcade frowned at the bot, both for continuing to try to ‘talk’ to him and for offering the suggestion that he hop into the lake to cool off.

Arcade stretched his arms behind his head and scanned the shoreline. What he had supposed were lakelurks in the distance had wandered further away from their position. Everything else was still. He sat back down on the shipping crate with a heavy sigh, watching as the Courier combed over the bomber. To Arcade’s inexpert eye it looked rather serviceable, relatively intact, and he assumed this would be good news for securing the Boomers’ assistance in the impending battle, for better or for worse. He sighed and picked up the Courier’s discarded canteen, sipping lazily while ED-E hovered. Eventually, the Courier must have satisfied his curiosity because he dove neatly back into the lake and swam to shore.

He was beaming when he got his feet underneath him on the boat ramp and pulled off the rebreather, hair dripping in his eyes. His grin only dimmed slightly as he met Arcade’s gaze and dropped the rebreather to the concrete. “What d’ya think, Doc?”

“I think you think it’s a good idea,” Arcade said, standing. He walked up even with the Courier on the ramp. “It’s impressive,” he allowed, the B-29 floating proudly on the lake. He looked at the Courier askance. “I also think that you reek. What is that?”

The Courier made a face and turned himself around to show Arcade his back and shoulders. “Got a little twisted up at the bottom,” he explained. The ‘34’ on the back of his vault suit was unreadable, hidden by some sort of green-brown lake sludge that also covered the Courier’s neck and the back of his head. “Not like I was all that clean before I went in, after this mornin’,” he shrugged.

He unzipped the jumpsuit, tossing it off to the side of the boat launch where it landed with a squelch, well away from his bag and hat, and he walked back into the water. He dunked his head under, hands carding through his hair and he made a face. He turned back to Arcade, sunlight glinting off the drops of water on his bare torso and asked, “I should have a rag or something in my bag. D’you mind?” His expression was shuttered, hesitant.

“Sure,” Arcade said, throat dry, shouldering past ED-E to dig through the Courier’s mailbag, setting aside the Pip-Boy and the detonator and reaching past ammunition and components to find the rag in question.

The Courier caught it easily, with a small smile. “Thanks,” he said as he bent to soak it in the lake. His hips were just barely under the water. He paused as he wrung out the rag, tilted his head up at where Arcade still stood at the water’s edge. “The water’s fine,” he said simply, an invitation. It was much less overt than Arcade was used to, as if the Courier wasn’t sure what Arcade’s answer would be.

To be perfectly fair, Arcade wasn’t entirely sure what Arcade’s answer would be, given how uncertain the Courier was being. This certainly wasn’t the first time they’d argued; it had taken weeks at the beginning for them to fall into a true understanding of each other. This was, however, the most significant thing they had disagreed on, an accord not yet reached. But it also wouldn’t be the first time they had bathed together, hands wandering, although the open air of Lake Mead was hardly the same thing as the closed door of the Lucky 38 bathroom. All that considered, Arcade _was_ feeling the heat of the day in the way his shirt clung to his back, and he had been standing closer than he would have liked when a cazador had exploded upon impact earlier that morning. Quite honestly he could use the rinse off.

He glanced at ED-E hovering nonjudgmentally by the Courier’s discarded clothes. He’d wondered since he first saw the eyebot—upgraded, a more sophisticated model than most that roamed the Wasteland—if it was somehow capable of visual surveillance besides the standard audio recording and radio transmission that the bots were uniformly programmed for. He had examined ED-E surreptitiously on many occasions, never finding anything that gave any indication it was capable of video, but even still Arcade hesitated. If it was transmitting, whoever might be on the receiving end could end up getting quite the show.

He glanced back at the Courier—who was doing a passable job at looking like he was more concerned with scrubbing down the backs of his arms than determining why Arcade had remained silent and clothed—and shrugged off his lab coat and tossed it over ED-E. The bot beeped somewhat indignantly and dipped slightly, but kept hovering, looking like a Pre-War cartoon depiction of a ghost floating there with the white fabric draping down.

The Courier simply chuckled, his back still turned, while Arcade carefully placed his glasses next to the Pip-Boy and stripped.

Arcade trudged out to join him, eyeing the way the ramp disappeared underwater with suspicion. The water wasn’t cold, exactly, but felt like a godsend with the sun still inexorably climbing its way up into the sky.

“There we go, Doc,” the Courier said quietly. His grin wavered for just a moment and he rubbed at the back of his neck with the rag. “You still mad at me?”

Arcade looked at him in open surprise, half wishing he had left his glasses on so he could see exactly what the Courier’s face was doing. “I’m not mad at _you_ ,” he said, slipping gingerly into the lake up to his shoulders before standing quickly back up. “I’m mad at the geopolitical realities of the world we live in.”

The Courier bumped at his side with a wry smile, the set of his shoulders eased somewhat. “I bet you’re real fun at parties.”

Arcade splashed him with a frown, and the Courier chuckled, but he didn’t dispute it. He really wasn’t much fun at parties, not that he had an overabundance of ‘parties’ to attend that didn’t originate in the Lucky 38.

“You should just get it over with,” the Courier said, gesturing at Arcade’s still-dry head. Arcade had been wavering internally about submerging himself completely, but he hadn’t thought he was that obvious. “This ramp’s been here for probably over three hundred years. It was built for boats. Not like it’s suddenly going to crumble away to nothing with us on it.”

“You don’t know that,” he said, just to be contrary, but he held his breath and ducked under the water regardless. He came up with a minimum of sputtering and shot a glare at the Courier for good measure.

“I’m not sayin’ anything, Doc.”

And he didn’t, for the next few minutes, dragging the cloth across his skin silently. Eventually he held it out to Arcade with a look and a jerk of his head, and with a grateful nod Arcade turned around so that the Courier could scrub at his back.

He swiped the rag between his shoulder blades—efficient movements, not indecent, the rough cloth dragging the cool of the lake across his skin—and down the muscles in small of his back, just stopping short of dipping below the waterline. When Arcade turned to do the same for the Courier, wiping away the last of the grime from the bottom of the lake with a disgusted frown and the same minimum of suggestive touching, he considered just pressing himself up against the Courier’s back, slipping his arms around him, but instead asked, “Are we…okay?”

The Courier turned around, took the rag from his hands and just looked at him for a moment. He must have liked what he saw, because he waded forward, coming to rest his forehead in the crook of Arcade’s neck. “Nah, Doc,” he said. “We’re great.” Arcade could feel his tired smile quirk against his collarbone.

Arcade sighed into the embrace, bringing his arms up to encircle the Courier’s damp shoulders, unease dissipating. “Okay,” he said slowly. “You just seemed…”

The Courier wrapped his arms around Arcade’s middle easily, eyebrows raised. “I mean…” he shrugged. “First off, I didn’t think this was really your kinda thing,” he said, gesturing at the open air around them. They were still alone, Arcade had checked, ED-E and the lab coat notwithstanding.

“It’s not,” Arcade admitted, trailing the edge of a nail down the Courier’s back. It was true, he preferred to keep private things private in all spheres of his life, but to every rule there was an occasional exception. And if Arcade wanted to make sure the Courier understood he wasn’t placing blanket blame on him for all the things he found wrong with the Mojave, then there were worse ways to show it than by crowding against him waist-deep in Lake Mead.

“But we’ve almost died four times in the past 36 hours,” he continued, taking a stab at levity and pressing a kiss into the Courier’s damp hair. “Maybe I want to use this moment to celebrate our fragile mortality.”

“Okay,” the Courier said with a huff of a laugh, a genuine smile blooming on his lips. “I think the shelling was the only time we ‘almost died.’” He brushed his stubbled cheek against Arcade’s neck. “Maybe the deathclaws,” he allowed, running his hands down Arcade’s back, once again stopping just short of dipping below the surface.

He drew back to look Arcade in the eye. “Second, I just didn’t want you to be doing this like you thought you had to apologize or something.”

Arcade pulled back even further; this was hardly the time for teasing, given the serious tone of their earlier argument and the fact that they were just returning to talking normally now, but the Courier had given him too obvious of an opening. “Oh,” he said, affecting his sharpest of expressions. “Because _I’m_ the one who needs to apologize?”

The Courier’s eyes widened comically, and Arcade nearly cracked right then, but just managed to keep his expression severe. “Whoa, no, Doc, that’s not what I meant. I think you’ve—”

Arcade’s smirk must have peeked through because the Courier’s expression rapidly shifted from alarmed to disbelieving to delighted. “Oh, you absolute fucker,” the Courier said with a grin, and he splashed Arcade viciously.

Arcade laughed and splashed back—quite the mature, eloquent dialogue they had going on—and the Courier dropped low and rushed him as if he were going to dunk him beneath the surface. Arcade took one step backward too many, slipping off the edge of the boating ramp and into the water. He had only swallowed half a mouthful of lake water before the Courier had his arms around him and pulled him up—panic hadn’t even had the chance to spike across his awareness.

He spluttered in the Courier’s arms, clinging to his shoulders and glaring.

The Courier shook his head, keeping them afloat with ease. “You’re the worst,” he said, once Arcade had taken a few long, dry breaths.

“You’re the one who tried to drown me.”

“We’re in eight feet of water, Doc, and you deserved it. Because, as I said, you’re the worst.”

Arcade grinned. “I had you for a moment there, didn’t I.”

“Hell yeah, you did,” the Courier laughed, brow furrowed slightly.

Arcade chuckled, mouthed at the Courier’s jaw in consolation. “Consider it long-overdue payback for all the times you’ve done the same to me.”

“Yeah, but you’re too fun to get riled up, Doc,” the Courier said, moving to press a kiss to Arcade’s lips. He stopped short, expression becoming serious again. “I mean. You know, just teasin’,” the Courier shrugged and nodded back to the boat launch. “ _That_ got kinda heavy back there.”

“Yeah,” Arcade sighed, brushing damp hair back from the Courier’s temple. “I probably could have voiced my concerns sooner. And at a lower volume. Preferably indoors and with some forewarning.”

“Preferably,” the Courier agreed. “But that doesn’t mean you weren’t right. We should have powwowed after talking to Pearl, hell, after talking to Crocker. But you’re not,” he paused, frowned, literally and figuratively treading water. “You’re not exactly what I’d call _shy_ , so when you didn’t say anything I just kinda assumed everything was fine.” He shrugged. “I didn’t mean to just full steam ahead there.”

Arcade snorted. “Sure you did, but that’s _you_.” He brushed his thumb along the Courier’s jaw and sighed. “Helping the Boomers _is_ the right call.”

“Hey,” the Courier said quietly, shifting closer in the water. “Like I said, I’m not looking for an apology. And if I wanted a yes man I’d head over to Tops.” He bumped his forehead against Arcade’s gently. “I need someone to make me stop and think every once in a while, Doc. That’s you.”

Arcade smiled softly, running one hand over the Courier’s scarred chest beneath the water. They still had a lot to discuss, but they each knew where the other stood, and for now that was enough. They would be fine. “Not to step on the moment,” he said, glancing back at the ramp. “But couldn’t we maybe continue this conversation on dry land?”

“I dunno,” the Courier leaned back, eyes dancing over the surface of the lake in the sunlight. “I think this is the perfect time to teach you to swim.”

“I know how to swim,” Arcade lied.

“Really?” The Courier’s eyebrows were sky high. “So you’re sayin’ if I were to let go ‘a you…”

“Okay, okay,” Arcade said, clinging to the Courier more tightly. “Fine. I don’t know how to swim. But quite frankly, I don’t see the point in learning. We live in a desert.”

“You might not live here forever, Doc,” the Courier shrugged easily. “Besides, your logic’s a little faulty. We’re swimming in the desert right now.”

Arcade glared at him and the Courier chuckled. “Have it your way, then,” he said as he pulled them both back over to the ramp. Arcade didn’t even pretend not to seem grateful to get his feet back under him.

The Courier shook his head, amused, and began making his way back to where ED-E and their clothes waited, splashing carelessly as he waded, improved mood obvious in the swing in his step.

“Hey,” Arcade called, still waist-deep on the ramp, and the Courier turned back around. “Did you not want to—”

The Courier stood, hands on his hips, and scanned the shoreline. He was visibly half-hard, heavy against his thigh and utterly unselfconscious. After a moment he shrugged, “Sure, why the hell not.”

“Nice,” Arcade said, rolling his eyes. “Romantic.”

“Want me to woo you, Doc?” the Courier said, stalking back into the water. “Because I can woo you.”

“No, no,” he said, stepping easily into the Courier’s arms. “Wouldn’t want to cause you any undue strain.”

The Courier scraped his teeth against Arcade’s ear. “The worst,” he repeated.

Arcade’s only reply was to grin and draw him into a kiss, sinking both hands into the Courier’s wet hair. They were as unrestrained together now as they had been tentative when bathing before, hands roaming, the Courier’s stubble a familiar pleasant burn against Arcade’s cheeks, neck. The Courier pulled Arcade flush against him, both hands cupping his ass, finally slipping below the water without pause. Arcade nudged a knee between the Courier’s, trying to get even closer, and they both moaned into their kiss when cock met thigh.

The Courier snaked one hand between their stomachs, Arcade digging his nails into the Courier’s back when he squeezed at the base of his length before encircling them both. The sensation of them rubbing together was all distorted beneath the water, less friction, more movement. Arcade arched into the Courier’s touch, nipped at a sensitive spot beneath his ear, sucking a kiss in the same spot when the Courier grunted his appreciation. Arcade had just begun to suck a trail of kisses down the Courier’s neck when he felt another teasing brush against his ass. He grinned against the Courier’s collarbone, thinking he was unsubtly hinting at something, then pulled back with a start.

The Courier’s left hand was currently curled around Arcade’s neck, his right around his cock. Unless he had suddenly sustained an excessive amount of rads and grown a third arm in the past five minutes, he wasn’t also brushing against Arcade from behind. He felt something move again and darted out of the water, leaving the Courier startled, mouth open, in his wake.

“What the hell was that?” the Courier asked, baffled, trudging out after him.

“My question exactly,” Arcade said, gesturing wildly at the water. “ _This_ is why I don’t need to know how to swim.”

The Courier turned his head, eyebrows raised dubiously, scanning the lake. The bomber floated proudly in the distance, but nothing in the shallows stirred. The look he turned back on Arcade was one part pity, two parts bemusement. “It was probably a fish,” he said.

“Yeah, well,” Arcade said. “I’m sorry if the only thing I want touching me is _you_.”

The Courier snorted, shook his head and smiled fondly. He walked deliberately up the boat ramp, putting several feet between himself and the water line, and held out one hand out for Arcade to take as he settled down. “I think I can work with that,” he said as he smiled, patting the concrete next to him as if inviting him to bed.

Arcade let the Courier reel him in, thoughts of creatures swirling beneath the water momentarily pushed aside. The Courier stretched out, back flush with the incline of the concrete boating ramp. He wriggled in an attempt to settle in as best he could—he was still obviously feeling where he’d fallen flat on his ass two nights prior—completely uncaring that he was on display for Arcade and all of Lake Mead to see. Arcade’s eyes traced the crisscross of scars on the Courier’s chest, arms; Arcade had found through extensive exploration that his back was not similarly scarred—for no reason more profound than that the Courier was forever facing the danger of the moment, not running from it.

The Courier was a man being pulled in a hundred different directions, with all sorts vying for his aid and attentions, and yet, with the newly risen B-29 in the distance, ED-E floating patiently in the background, and a host of considerations back beyond Nellis at the Strip, it was Arcade and his apparent newfound fear of fish that held his full focus. Arcade had to laugh.

“What?” the Courier asked, bemused.

Arcade eased closer to him on the concrete and ran a steady hand up his stomach to his chest, coming to a rest at his clavicle.

The Courier’s eyebrows were still quirked, curious, unselfconscious.

Arcade smiled. “It’s just, sometimes I find it difficult to believe that you’re someone I actually know.”

The Courier barked a surprised laugh and brushed one thumb against Arcade’s jaw. “That’s an awfully existential thought for foreplay, Doc.”

Arcade chuckled. “Yeah, I suppose it is. But shouldn’t you be used to that by now?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” he said, and he tugged Arcade over on top of him.

They were both damp from the lake, water dripping from Arcade’s hair down onto the Courier’s face as they met in a kiss. The Courier pushed up against Arcade where he straddled his thighs, rolling his hips and groaning at the friction of skin on skin now without water to dull it. Arcade bent down to mouth at the hinge of his jaw, the Courier flinging one hand out to catch in the hair at the nape of his neck. Their hands knocked together only once between their bodies, silently negotiating position and rhythm as they both took hold of their lengths and rocked together.

The Courier groaned again, turning his head away to bite his lip, then pressing his face more deeply into Arcade’s neck. His breath was warm against Arcade’s face, but not nearly as warm as the sun on the long line of his exposed back. It must be near noon now, and it seemed as though Arcade could feel every beam of the UV rays beating against his skin, even through the pleasantly overwhelming slide of their bodies together. It would just be his luck to come away from this expedition sunburned. Cass would never let him hear the end of it.

Another groan and a hard, sucking kiss to the underside of his jaw dragged Arcade’s thoughts away from the heat of the day and back to the heat of the Courier, and he doubled down on the rocking of his hips, thumb smearing mingled pre-cum across both their stomachs. The Courier’s hand stuttered and restarted between them—he must be close. Arcade nosed at his jaw, coaxed him into another kiss, and swallowed down the moan that accompanied the shuddering of his body.

The Courier smiled into the kiss after a moment, hooking one knee more closely behind Arcade’s ass, pulling him down more tightly to rut into the plane of the Courier’s hip. Arcade had to break their kiss, panting for breath into his shoulder as the Courier’s hand picked up the pace between them, both of Arcade’s hands needed to brace himself, clutching fruitlessly against the warm concrete.

The Courier pressed a kiss against Arcade’s jaw, ran one soothing hand down his back. His palm felt cool compared to the sunlight. “Come on, Doc,” he murmured against his ear. “I’ve got you.” And Arcade shuddered, coming with a groan, the Courier’s hand still on him.

Arcade let himself sink to the concrete, one shoulder resting on the Courier’s chest and their legs still tangled together. They were both flushed and sweating, sticky along their stomachs and their thighs, any evidence that they had bathed thoroughly erased. The Courier blinked open his eyes and threw one arm over his face for shade, squinting in annoyance at the sun, as though it were personally inconveniencing him. Arcade merely turned his face back toward the concrete beneath him, willing to sacrifice his back to sunburn if it spared his eyes.

“Ugh,” the Courier eventually moaned, gently moving Arcade off of him to sit up. “This was probably a bad idea.”

Arcade got his elbows beneath him and levered himself up to the Courier’s eye level, extending one hand to encompass the lake, the plane, and everything in between. “Please tell me you recognize the irony in you saying that right now.”

“Ugh,” the Courier said again, knocking their foreheads together. “Don’t you ever get tired of trying to be right all the time?”

“I’ll let you know when it stops working,” Arcade said dryly.

“Come on, Doc,” the Courier said, tugging at his arm. He stood, and after a moment dragged Arcade to his feet. He hooked a thumb back down the boat ramp toward the lake. “We should probably try that again before getting dressed.”

Arcade grimaced at the thought of what else the water may hold in store besides cool, clean skin, but he would rather be dragged by a monster into the undertow than put his shirt back on while covered in the Courier’s and his own mess, so he allowed the Courier to lead him back down the ramp nonetheless.

They were a different kind of silent as they bathed this time, boneless and affectionate. The Courier finished rinsing himself down first as he wasn’t bothered by keeping an eye out for stray aquatic life, and plastered himself along Arcade’s back, able to comfortably hook his chin over his shoulder thanks to the incline of the ramp. Arcade leaned into his touch, his damp skin a welcome relief from the sun on his back. As he splashed away the last of the stickiness from his stomach the B-29 caught his eye, seemingly prepared to wait as patiently on the surface of Lake Mead as it had waited at the bottom. Arcade couldn’t stand there certain that turning the bomber over to the Boomers was the best course of action, but just this once he was prepared to allow the Courier to be certain enough for them both.

The Courier caught the direction of Arcade’s look and wrapped his arms around him and murmured, “You sure you don’t wanna swim out there and have a look at ‘er?”

“No,” he said, too quickly. The Courier smirked but kissed his cheek. “I can see it just fine from here,” Arcade elaborated.

“You don’t have your glasses on,” the Courier pointed out.

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, I do, Doc,” he said, turning to finally exit the water, one hand dragging against Arcade’s hip.

His glasses were the first thing Arcade retrieved, slipping them on and taking stock of the shoreline around them. As far as he could tell, they were the only living things foolish enough to venture out into the full sunlight of the Mojave afternoon. He bent to pick up his roughly folded clothes, hoping that the relative lack of scratching of the material of his shirt against his back meant he’d escaped without a burn after all.

“You know I think the same thing, right?” the Courier said from a few feet away, tugging on his jeans.

Arcade mentally flipped through the last few topics they’d covered, swimming and teasing and the bomber, and came up blank. “What?” he asked distractedly, making sure nothing had crawled into his shoes.

“You,” the Courier said, shrugging on his t-shirt, not caring that his skin turned it damp in patches. “When you said sometimes you’re surprised to know me,” he clarified with a shrug. “I can’t believe that I was dumb lucky enough to just run into _you_.”

Arcade paused, one sock still inside out.

“I mean it,” the Courier said. “I’m glad every day that I know you, Doc.”

Arcade’s eyebrows shot up. That was as close to an admission of…something as either of them had ever come. “I—” he flipped the sock right side out without looking at it. “Thanks,” he finished lamely.

The Courier snorted affectionately, all smiles, and popped his hat on his head.

Arcade eyed the B-29 as he leaned against the towing winch for support, tying one shoe then the other. He wasn’t running around the Mojave sending ghouls into space or recovering relics of the Pre-War military—he wasn’t being asked by all-comers to drum up support for a fight that was not strictly his own—but he was making his impact in his own way, tending wounds and arguing for what was right.

The Courier followed his gaze, again, glancing up from his Pip-Boy, and cleared his throat, “You know, if you changed your mind—if you still think she’ll cause more harm than good—we can scuttle her again. Boomers wouldn’t know any different; they never leave Nellis.”

“Sure, that’s true,” Arcade said. But he gestured around them, first at the Fort, then at the Dam and Camp Golf a ways across the lake. “But do you really believe we’re the only ones who’ve seen this so far?”

It wasn’t exactly a secret that both the Legion and the NCR were monitoring the Courier’s actions, movements, let alone Mr. House.

“Probably not,” the Courier agreed. “But we can still do it.”

Arcade retrieved his lab coat, making a face when ED-E beeped at him and waggled his antennae as if stretching. He turned back to the Courier. “You trust the Boomers?”

The Courier gathered a breath, thought on it for a moment. “Yes,” he decided.

“Okay,” Arcade said, fixing his cuffs. “And I trust you.”

“And it’s that simple?” the Courier asked, shouldering his bag.

Arcade shrugged, “Maybe it is. Not everything has to be complicated.”

“Yeah,” the Courier shrugged as well. “But some things are. You and I—‘n anybody else who wants to—are goin’ to have a long talk about the NCR after we get back from Nellis.”

“Sure,” Arcade agreed easily. And he had hope that that discussion would go a bit more calmly than the one they held just a short while ago; that no matter what conclusion they came to, they’d get to it together.

Arcade smiled toward the sun as ED-E beeped, the Courier casting one last longing look at the B-29, and they turned to make the journey back to Nellis side by side.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://falloutkinkmeme.livejournal.com/5459.html?thread=11357523#t11357523) on the Fallout Kink Meme.
> 
> Come commiserate with me/mock me for not having Fallout 4 on [tumblr](http://kuznetsovs.tumblr.com).


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